


rosemary and thyme

by wanderNavi



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Gen, Nonbinary My Unit | Reflet | Robin, Reunions, lots of hugs, whoops lmao, wrong robin try again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24314077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: First of all, Robin’s convinced they’re in the afterlife because there’s Chrom and there’s Lissa, both of whom are extremely dead by their hands, and he’s pulling them off the ground, expression soft and saying, “It’s over now.”
Relationships: Chrom & My Unit | Reflet | Robin
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	rosemary and thyme

First of all, Robin’s convinced they’re in the afterlife because there’s Chrom and there’s Lissa, both of whom are extremely dead by their hands, and he’s pulling them off the ground, expression soft and saying, “It’s over now.” Good riddance. The shinning sun almost burns them with its luminous might, so hot and cleansing after all those years spent in the dark that when they collapse into his hug, they can’t help but break into tears, a novelty in itself. They hadn’t been able to scream or cry or do anything at every travesty they were forced to do by their hands. Robin clings to him and thanks the machinations of death for removing the burning hole they drove through him and for fixing his electrified heart.

“Chrom. Chrom, I missed you so much,” Robin heaves through their gasps and their tears. “Oh, thank the gods. I thought I’d never be allowed to be with you.”

“Hey, it’s alright, it’s over, I’ve got you,” they hear and by every one of Naga’s tears, they missed him so much they were clawing and starving for every glimpse and contact they could get of him. Even if it was only that unpolished prince not yet sufficiently burned in the fire of leadership; even if it meant sabotaging every tethered connection between them and Grima, despite the howling agony, so that the version of themselves in the past world – the better world – had an actual chance with their harebrained scheme.

Lissa collides into the hug as Robin, bereft of all other words, says, “Oh gods, I’m so glad.”

They stand there, in their messy huddle, with Frederick to the side, standing guard and watching. Birds chirp in the trees fencing in the fields and insects buzz in the long grass. Robin flops a hand at Frederick’s direction, but he only laughs and tells them no, he’s fine keeping watch. That’s fair, none of them are fit for the task.

Finally, they have enough of Lissa’s hoopskirt pressing bruises into all their legs and the clip holding Chrom’s cloak has enough salt on it and Robin wants to get a look at their hands again. They sniff one more time and lean back. Rubbing a sleeve over their face, they say, “Okay, _whew_ , got that out of our systems.”

Lissa laughs with a few more tears leaving trails down her cheeks. Robin looks down at their hands. No more brands. They waver, trying to comprehend the magnitude of what that means, then shelve the matter for another day.

“Come on, let’s go back,” Chrom says with a final pat on their back. “Everyone’s going to want to see you. We all missed you.”

“Back?” Robin asks.

His hands are on their shoulders, warm through the fabric of their coat. His smile may be wet on the edges, but it glows with a luminous presence. “Home. Ylisstol.”

Unable to bear the wonder, they hang their head for a moment, hiding their gasping expression. The grass beneath their feet wave their fresh green blades – it’s spring. They look back up. “Yes, let’s go home.”

* * *

All the scars on the great castle are as Robin remembers. It seems slightly incongruous that the version of Ylisstol castle in the afterlife has all the familiar potholes and cracked walls and ivy-laced gates from during Chrom’s scant peaceful years, instead of being a polished, flawless monument. But this is the Ylisstol they all know best; it wouldn’t be home without its open-air markets, chimney smoke, and the off white, beige-gray of the carved stone walls.

The guards at the castle gate give a slight double take at the sight of Robin when they finally troop up to the front doors. But Robin’s gone at least three days in the wild and an eternity in a void without a bath and their hair is starting to feel filthy from walking in the warm outdoors.

“At ease,” Chrom says and easily parts the way through. Robin quickly follows after him while the guards are busy trading glances with each other and Frederick.

“Bath, bath, bath,” they chant under their breath for Lissa’s delightful laugh.

Of course there are servants in the castle too, attending to the castle and helping them draw the water. Robin remembers the ruins Grima made of the town and their home, piles of bodies dumped onto the ground under the invading dark army’s trampling feet.

Before they part ways into the halls of the castle, Chrom clasps his hand on Robin’s shoulder once more and tells them, “I’ll see you at dinner.”

But then things take a turn for the confusing when after Robin takes their well-anticipated soak, Sumia comes to collect them, holding the tiny hand of a girl with Chrom’s eyes and trailing a much older Lucina behind her. Robin stares down at the child for a moment, makes an educated guess, and says, “Wow, she’s grown.”

Sumia beams. She kneels to the same height as the princess and says, “Lucy, say hi to Robin!”

Lucy waves and says hi in an adorable voice. Robin’s a little busy processing the implications of what’s before them, but they’re mindful enough to say back to the little squirt, “Hello Lucy. Are you ladies here to make sure I don’t get lost going to dinner?”

“Yes, Father requested your presence,” says Lucina, the older one, the double, the one that _definitely_ should not be in the afterlife.

Their hair is still damp and the new fabric of all their clothing still lightly itch, but Robin didn’t bluff their way out of pirates’ bar at age sixteen for nothing, so they grin and cheerfully say, “Well, let’s not keep him waiting, shall we?”

Dinner proceeds in an off-kilter manner, with lots of patting hands and grasping hugs and no less than three people wiping at their eyes and sniffing at the sight of Robin. They take things gamely in stride, even as Laurent sweeps into the hall at his mother’s wake, still talking about something from the alchemy labs, and Cynthia barrels through the doors with her younger self riding her shoulders.

Chrom leaves a seat open at his side which Robin takes as everyone makes their way to the table and begin ladling food onto their plates. They lean over to get his attention so they can tell him, “I need to talk with you about something after we’re done eating.”

Equally softly, so the sound doesn’t travel far through the din, he replies, “Alright. We’ll go to my study and have a drink.”

Robin nods and settles back down, willing the ground to stabilize beneath their feet and processing what it means when the living dine with the presumed dead.

* * *

After the dinner, as promised, Robin follows Chrom out the dining hall. He leads them to the smaller study to the side of the library that he prefers over the ornate and gargantuan official study for the Exalt. The path to its location, the stickiness in the door hinges which Chrom kicks against with unconscious muscle memory, and the chaotic explosion of papers against the walls are all exactly as Robin remembers. Everything around Chrom and everything he does – _except his daughters_ – is exactly as Robin would wish to have greet them when they finally managed to escape the prison of their enslavement to Grima and the Grimleal, all in all making separating their assumptions from what might be reality excessively difficult.

Chrom dumps a stack of papers onto the floor, exposing a chair with a squashed flat cushion. “Have a seat,” he says. “What did you want to talk about?”

From a cabinet precariously squeezed against a wall, he pulls out a bottle of rum and a pair of tinkling glass cups. He pour them both a generous helping and plonks a couple magically compelled ice cubes into each cup.

Robin takes the glass nudged in their direction. Opening their mouth to speak, they realize the embarrassment bubbling up in their chest, and decide to take a sip instead. Chrom takes a seat at the other side of the desk, slightly slouched and relaxed, the warm meal before making him genial. He has his legs crossed. Robin takes another tiny sip, then finds that they can’t delay any further and say, “This isn’t the afterlife is it.”

He startles. “Pardon?”

They always blush in blotchy patches that make everything worse, but they hold their ground and say, “The first person I saw was _you_ , and from my perspective it … it made sense, alright?”

Setting their glass down onto what looked like a six-month-old report from some district in the northeast, they say, “I don’t think I’m your Robin.”

Chrom drinks. Above the glass, his eyes narrow in wary confusion. He drinks again, still thinking, though soon the alcohol won’t really be helping that venture. The candlelight dances over the polished surfaces of the glass, like over crystals, so that it’s as if his hand holds glittering liquid amber. The ice cubes clink together in a racket as he lowers the glass down and exhales heavily, leaning back into the creaking wood of his chair. With the exact same tone he uses when it’s the thirtieth hour of lock jammed negotiations and an excitable Cynthia lays in ambush in the near future, right when Chrom is at the very end of his rope, he says, “Start with why you don’t think you’re in the afterlife. We’ll work our way forward from there.”

It’s _exactly_ the same way he started sounding after around his third year of fatherhood and Robin cannot be faulted for confusing this Chrom for theirs. Everything they’ve seen so far is perfectly aligned with the world before Robin made the mistake of not knocking Chrom out and dumping him under Frederick’s watchful glare and killing their father by themselves.

“You’re daughters,” says Robin. “You’ve got four of them, or more precisely two pairs of them. Cynthia was nine when you – when you died. Or the other Chrom died. There weren’t any other royal children from him. From my Chrom. None of the kids are supposed to be dead.”

They drink.

His glass hangs forgotten from his fingers and he says, “You saw me and assumed you were dead.”

“I prayed for years for someone to finally defeat Grima, well aware of the consequences of how closely tied we were,” Robin tells him. “When Grima finally fell, it was the logical conclusion I would as well. If nothing else, it would be fair penance for my crimes and treachery. And you’re exactly like him, so…”

He glances away, jaw tense. Strained and quiet, he says, “So you’re alive and you’re not this world’s Robin.”

They’re almost out of rum, which Chrom really poured out too much of, and which is what they will later blame while ignoring their moderately high alcohol tolerance for why they then say, “I don’t see why your Robin can’t come back either.”

Chrom’s eyes flick over and land on theirs. “Why do you think that?”

“Doesn’t make sense that I could come back from the dead and they can’t,” Robin says and makes grabbing motions for the bottle. He hands it over. They pour another generous shot of the rum for themselves. “So, I don’t see why they can’t come back either. Maybe just needed a little more time coming back home.”

“Hmm.” Chrom drains his glass. He closes his eyes and breathes out, long and deep, as he settles the weight of his task back onto his shoulders. “Then I’ll keep searching. For now, you can keep your room until we find them. Then we’ll figure out the logistical details.”

They make a vague noise of agreement. He refills his cup.

Between the two of them, they drain the bottle and half of the next, talking into the night about things that leave Robin’s head the moment they say and hear them.

* * *

The next day, Robin finds Chrom in one of the courtyard gardens, in the shade of rose trees and ornamental dogwoods in full pink and green pastel bloom. He sees them coming down the path between the rows of magnolia trees perfuming the air with their large, thick-petaled flowers. As they draw near, he pats the space next to him on the stone bench he sits on. They sit in the offered seat. The dense heads of peonies brush against their legs.

“You settling in fine?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Robin says. “I’ve already started looking over the current petitions and reports in your office –”

“Of course you did. Did Frederick give you the key or did you break in?”

They wave the matter aside. “I can get up to speed in a few more days I think.” Carefully looking forward instead of to the side, they say, “If you want me to.”

“Yes,” Chrom says immediately. “That would be great.”

“Alright.”

A dragonfly darts through the air. Robin watches it go and weighs the words it takes to articulate a matter that crept into their mind since morning and hunkered down to make a nuisance of itself since. They say into the air, “Where’s Morgan?” because no one mentioned her last night or during today and Robin hadn’t asked during the trek back to Ylisstol because they were still operating under the assumption they were _dead_ at the time. And Morgan should not be dead, can _not_ be dead, but no one’s mentioned her, and they didn’t see any signs of her in the castle, and what can that mean but –

“Oh, she’s reigning champion of the Ferox arenas. She’s in the western half of Ferox right now,” Chrom says.

All of Robin’s panic grinds to a halt. They don’t exactly slump in relief and asks, “Who’s the khan she’s fighting for then?”

Chrom looks at them oddly for a moment, then the expression passes with an almost grim understanding and he says, “Basilio.”

They stare back at him and faintly says, “Oh, right.” Right, he’s alive in this world. Then they say, “How’s that working out for him? Morgan can be enthusiastic.”

He grins, wiping away any wisps of death’s presence. “Excellently. Flavia always complains that he’s stealing all the good swordsmen from her, but Lucina heads north to help her from time to time. She’s currently tied with Morgan.”

“I should write to her. She needs to know that I’m – that I’m alive again.”

“You should,” Chrom says in agreement. “Let me know when you finish your letter and I can get you our fastest bird to Ferox.”

“Thank you,” Robin says, heart in their throat. It’s been years since they last saw Morgan and that last meeting with their daughter was of her fleeing desperately with her friends as Robin thrashed against Grima’s hold, fighting with rabid desperation to give her the slimmest thread of a chance to escape and survive.

* * *

Out of everyone, Robin takes the longest to getting used to them being alive again. Lissa laughs nervously every now and then as they scowl in confusion at ridiculous fashion trends that apparently swept through the noble ranks over the last couple of years. Cordelia and Frederick watch them warily, obviously caught off guard by everything they do that apparently their Robin did and everything they do that their Robin _didn’t_. Vaike lets them chase him around the sparring ring a couple times and decides that they’re as good as the same in his books and worth the same kinds of reactions.

Once Lucina and Robin accidentally end up alone in a room together and she opens her mouth, trying to say something, then closes her mouth. They sit in an awkward silence that Robin attempts to break once and never again.

But Robin finds themselves staring at their flexing bare hand. They find themselves looking for books that haven’t been added to the libraries yet and secret hideaways that don’t exist or already got patched over. They find themselves tripping over saying things like, “I thought we already took care of Broyld,” while squinting at a folder of papers in their hand and then remembering that no, Broyld never got shoved over the metaphorical cliff in this world because this Robin and Chrom foiled his thorn-in-the-side plot two years earlier than Robin and _their_ Chrom did and thus didn’t need to incarcerate the pain in the ass and seize his entire estate.

“We didn’t,” Chrom starts to say, but Robin interrupts him with, “I know, I know.”

Most of all, they stagger awake too many times at night, heaving for breath under the terrible weight of Grima holding them down, keeping them pinned with the threat of burning sharp claws curving against their neck and over their ribs. They blink in the shadows of night, at the sliver of moonlight reflecting off the bare steel of a sword mounted pride in place on the wall over their desk. They stare disbelieving at the light as the roar of the Risen hoards slowly echo into silence in their ears. Sometimes they’re shuddering, trying to push away the image of their own determined eyes and the harsh snarl of their vengeful smile as their own double calls forth a fistful of magic to kill them both with over and over again.

One evening, the memory returns that Grima used Robin’s hands to resurrect their good for nothing father and Robin doesn’t have any of the words to explain the violation and horror that sends them rocketing out into the gardens in the middle of dinner. Frederick finds them a couple minutes later frantically pacing in a directionless rage and Robin only has enough of themselves pulled together to snap out, “That man _killed me_ , he raised me for the slaughter, and then Grima used _my_ face and _my_ hands to – to resurrect _him_ –” and let out a short wordless howl.

So it’s a good thing their daughter arrives at Ylisstol the next morning after a breakneck, sprinting gallop all the way from Western Ferox.

Someone let Morgan dye her hair into streaks of vibrant pink and blue – which Robin has opinions about – but more importantly, she’s almost their height now.

Robin starts nonsensically patting her on the shoulders, on her arms. She’s filled out from the scraggly form of a child comprised of all elbows and knees into a fully grown adult. They rub their rough fingers over the hard calluses on her palm. She says, “Robin” and distractedly, they reply, “Yes, that’s me.”

She laughs, quiet and hitching.

Wrapping her back into a hug, Robin demands, “Who’s been feeding you? Hmm? Chrom says you’re running around being a freelance mercenary. Are you eating enough? Magic takes a lot of energy and so does riding after a target all day. Have people been giving you enough sweet buns?”

“Oh gods, it’s really you,” Morgan laughs again. “This world’s Robin completely forgot all their recipes. They have no idea how to cook or bake, it’s alarming.”

Robin draws back in horror, staring at their daughter’s laughter at their expression. “No,” they gasp. “No way. They forgot all of -?”

“Everything,” Morgan confirms.

Aghast, Robin asks, “What were _they_ feeding you then?”

Instead of answering, she breaks into helpless laughter again. She only repeats, “Oh gods, it’s really you.”

* * *

It’s just the two of them standing on the wall, looking out towards the rising sun with the wet wind of summer blowing. Chrom still hasn’t said anything about Robin dressed in Ylisse’s greens and blues under their ever-present purples. The birds in the trees below are vociferously loud.

In a few hours, Chrom will be departing on what’s part routine examination of border outposts and part his endless hunt for his Robin. Robin rolls their shoulders and nudges their hair out of their face.

Comfortably at his side, Robin asks him, “Do I have a place here?”

Due to his insistence against foisting all the child raising of his children onto Sumia and their servants, Chrom began drinking an excessively strong tea every morning, a feat that years in the army failed to achieve. Before his first cup these days, if there isn’t an immediate fight, he’s a bit bleary.

He blinks at Robin a few times and says, “Of course.”

“You sure about this?”

A painful tenderness crosses his face and Chrom steps closer. The sheer amount of body heat he can put out is, frankly, alarming, especially when it’s already so humid. He says, “You have a place here. Of course you do. I won’t say that it won’t be a bit odd, once we find this world’s Robin and there are two of you. But I won’t have it another way. I missed you.”

Robin breathes in deep. “Them. You miss them.”

“And you,” he says. Suddenly he’s hugging them. “The kids don’t remember much before their war, but Morgan does, and I’ve talked with her after the war. We looked for Robin together. And yes, you’re not them, your lives and experiences are different, but you were my friend in another world and I could see how from Morgan’s tales.

“After we figured out how Grima brought your body back in time, I thought about what it must have been like. What could possibly have been done to you, to enslave you so thoroughly.

“You and I, we never met, but we did meet. I missed you.”

Robin buries their watering eyes into the cloth of the cape Chrom insists on wearing. “Got it, you can shut up now.”

He ignores them. “I’m glad you’re at my side.”

“Chrom, I’m warning you –”

“And there will always be a place for you –”

“—I’m serious, drastic action will be taken –”

“—at my table, with my council, and in my heart.”

“Damnit Chrom, I told you to stop.” Robin sniffs to valiantly try preventing snot from getting on him. “Oh look, we’re both crying.” Wet patches bloom from the tears falling onto their shoulder.

But Chrom stubbornly goes on, “You never have to ask. The answer will always be yes.”

Robin sighs and sees that they failed to keep his clothing snot free. There are birds singing and distantly the town waking. The bands of color accompanying sunrise shift in the azure sky above. They sigh again and say in absolution for their two weary souls, “Thank you, Chrom. It means the world to me.”


End file.
